Switzerland

A day late, and a dollar short on this post, but the pictures are too gorgeous not to share.

After my mission companion's civil wedding in France, we drove in a 3-car caravan to the Bern (Zollikofen) Switzerland Temple for the sealing. Kim and I were in separate cars when we crossed the border, but both of us felt it. It was a rush. An overwhelming feeling of coming home. And it was all I could do to keep my eyes on the road and off the beautiful scenery that surrounded us. (For anyone who may not know, my siblings and I are a quarter Swiss German.)

Okay, one last commentary before the pictures . . .  having grown up in Utah, I have always loved the mountains. I have missed them terribly since moving away. So I thought I knew mountains. But wow. Utah mountains don't compare in the least to Switzerland's mountains. Breathtaking. Powerful. Beautiful. Mysterious. Commanding. And none of those words really captures it. I hope you all get a chance to go to Switzerland one day.

Here I am at the temple:

Kim is next to a lake we passed. This picture doesn't capture the amazing green-blue of the water, or the brilliant green of the hills.

Here is Kim, sitting on our hotel balcony. What a view, eh?

Okay, we might have had a little fun . . .

Maybe just a little.

And here's the view looking back down of the city of Lauterbrunen.

The Church you see behind us was featured in countless post cards, so we thought we should get a picture. This is actually where we parked our car before taking the tram.

And here it is again. I can't express enough how GREEN everything was. Just gorgeous.

This is the view we had as we walked down the mountain. I seriously wished I could live there.

And the view looking upwards. Seriously, the mountain had a soul, and you could feel it seeping out of everything.

Another view from further up.

I have so many more pictures I would love to share with you all, but I'll save it for another post. This time, I just wanted you to feel the grandeur of it all. But I'll work on culture next time (assuming I get that far). :)

French Weddings, part 1

I've been horrible at posting about all my travels lately, so today, I'm going to take the first steps to overcoming my blog neglect.

On July 2, one of my mission companions who is from France got married. My amazing in-laws offered to come take care of my family so I could be at the wedding . . .

in FRANCE!


My sister, Kim, went with me, and we had a blast participating in a beautiful French wedding for a deserving couple who looked so happy together.

So here I am, in front of the Mairie (Town Hall) where the required civil wedding takes place first.

No, town hall is not the cathedral you see. It's the little house-like building behind me.

And here they stand, with the civil authority to the right, and their required two-witnesses-each on either side of them.

Most of the ceremony went something like "according to law number this, and civil code number that, blah, blah, blah . . ." But towards the end, they spoke about the importance of children, and their duty as a married couple to raise their children with love and with respect to the laws of the land. Not an exact quote, but we thought it was very cool that they included that in a civil ceremony (the same ceremony that is used for all weddings).

Then, of course, everyone has to sign the papers right there.

When it was over, they came out to a bustle of bubbles that attacked any innocent bystanders who may have wanted to congratulate the newly married couple. (It was quite windy, and Kim, who joined the bubble-blowing children, may or may not have run off several guests with her bubble blowing skills).

And here I am, with the happy couple.

Not to let this post get too long, I'll work on adding more in the near future.